On 4/14/10 4:13 AM, oriel36 wrote:
On Apr 14, 5:55 am, Sam wrote:
Backward planets may have flipped into place
Reversed orbits among ‘hot Jupiters’ decreases chance of Earthlike
neighbors.http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...Backward_plane...

I am looking at the list of threads and this topic is sandwiched
between the guy who sees fossils in meteorites,another who apparently
sees human remains in coal strata and it all comes from the same
attempt to appear original and controversial at the same time and if
there is a nauseating feeling for many when they encounter junk,it is
probably the most valuable faculty they have before descending into
conceptual oblivion.

That's your problem, Gerald. There is no connection.

As we have more and better telescopes, the universe is revealing
herself observation by observation. It is important that one
continues to be a life-long learner, adapting one's world view as
more and better observations clarify the pricture.

It was a particular joy to me to apply Kepler's third law to
the observations of the Fomalhaut System and find that the mass
falling out of Kepler's equation agree beautifully with the mass
predicted by the spectra of that star.

Gerald I don't think you have the mathematical background to
understand Kepler's third law in its modern applications, but
do look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler's_laws_of_planetary_motion#Third_law

4π^2a^3 = P^2G(M + m)

Gerald, just because you can't understand the mathematics, does
not make it wrong.

Fomalhaut's mass is about 2 solar masses.
Fomalhaut-b's orbital RADIUS is 115 astronomical units, a = 115 AU.
Fomalhaut-b's orbital PERIOD is 872 years, T = 872 years.

And using Kepler's third law, we get,

P^2 = (2π)^2 a^3 / G M

(872 yr)^2 = (2π)^2 (115 AU )^3 / G (3.978 × 10^30 kg)

Kepler's third law works beautifully for the Fomalhaut system! The
observations agree beautifully with Kepler's law of Harmony!